This is a collection of mentions in articles about other people.
Thank you to the following members of the forum for these tidbits: college graduate (for the idea!), apothecary06, Lekinha, nuska_oO2, llyaay, nicoletita, Mauve, -sunshine, justduckey, wwwed, suus, Opalescence, jenanistonfan12, jenvidfan, debora-92, Efst@thi@, Jay Breezy and me, cookie jar.
Harper’s Bazaar, November 1998 (Brad Pitt article)
For the most part, the tabloids have trained their gaze on the busy business that has been Pitt’s love life. Rumor - and at least one well-publicized photo - has recently suggested that he is dating actress Jennifer Aniston, but both parties have refused to confirm this. When I raise the subject of romance, our dialogue becomes temporarily rather…curt. Is he in love at the moment? He won’t say. Why won’t he say? He won’t say why he won’t say. Okaaay, has he been hurt in love? Sure. Generally speaking, has he been more the hurter than the hurtee? He doesn’t know. He never added it up. Is he a good boyfriend? Ah, smiles. Yes, he thinks he is: “I’m pretty much mush. I like love. That’s the best way I can say it. I’m a huge believer in love and why two people come together and what the potentialities are of that - so I call myself sappy, but I’m not. I’m not sappy. I think there’s huge value in love.”
Because he doesn’t appear on Entertainment Tonight or late-night talk shows (“You have to come up with those cute little on-set stories. It’s just silly,” he says), Pitt’s public persona has been defined, more than that of most male stars, by the women he has dated. And they’re a pretty mixed bunch. When he was with the actress Juliette Lewis, we thought of him one way - as a boho hipster dude. With Paltrow, the image reverted to something more classic - the sweet regular guy in love with the classy gal. The Jennifer Aniston rumors prompted yet another revision. While reading the clippings on Pitt, I discovered that some years ago he dated Mike Tyson’s ex-wife, the actress Robin givens, at which point, I threw up my hands. This is not a man with a “type”.
“I suppose it’s to your credit,” I tell him, “that you don’t go for the same skinny model every time.”
He laughs. “I guess not. I guess not. The thing is, people get beauty all wrong -”
“Wait, are you going to tell me the true beauty comes from within?” “Well, I’m sorry, but it does. There are interesting people all over the world in all shapes and sizes - and really awful people in all the same shapes and sizes. I’m big on trial and error. You know, ‘What’s this about? I don’t know this; I don’t recognize it.’ Experiment! That’s what it’s all about, in life and acting and love. The most beautiful thing about [love] is discovery. Discovery with a woman.”
Hmm. “Do you think,” I ask, “that one of these days, your explorations will come to an end, that you’ll meet a woman and say, ‘Okay, this one’s a keeper’?
“Sure,” he says. “Sure. Come on. I mean, who doesn’t hope for that? Right?”
“Well, yes, but it’s difficult -”
“Look, how long have you been with your guy? I mean, what keeps you with him?”
I rattle on for a bit and then apologize for sounding a little lyrical.
“Bullshit. I think that’s dead-on. I believe that. There should be freedom of self in a couple, and appreciation of the other person, or there shouldn’t be a couple. All you’ve got is two people trying. You’ve just got to try; that’s all I’ve ever asked. But the mind’s a mess and people are such a mess, and they get into things for all the wrong reasons and stay in things for even worse reasons. So, yeah, I’m not doing it until it’s all that. Otherwise, I don’t want it.”
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Vanity Fair, November 1998 (Brad Pitt article)
For the past several months, Pitt has been going out with Jennifer Aniston. “Oh God, I don’t know,” he said when I mentioned her. “I have no idea what to tell you. No idea.” He wrapped his arms around his chest and looked at me sweetly, but said no more. People who know Aniston describe her as warm, down-to-earth, uncomplicated - “an angel.”
[...]
But that evening, as nearly as could be made out from his voice, Brad Pitt’s big, idealistic heart was at peace. With his arms still wrapped around him, he said, “I’m not in a hurry. Listen, if it’s not right, I don’t want it. I’m telling you straight: it’s a damned good time of my life.”
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Associated Press - November, 1998 (Brad Pitt article)
Q. Is Jennifer (Aniston, his current romantic interest) taking you off the market for good?
A. We’ll see.
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Empire, February 1999 (Brad Pitt article)
The current bet is Jennifer Aniston, with whom Pitt was snapped-in full nuzzling, hair-stroking mode-at a Freedom For Tibet concert in the summer. Such is the mania for all things Brad that the bloke who took the picture has syndicated the rights to it over 2,000 times [...].
Pitt won’t talk about Aniston, but until he does, female journalists will continue to fantasise in print.
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W, July 1999 (Brad Pitt article)
As for the media’s ongoing interest in his breakup with Paltrow, Pitt just,wishes it would subside. “That one keeps getting brought up, and it’s been two years,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know that anymore. I have this new thing going now and we’re trying to …. That one was no different than any other two people together. I don’t know why that one still gets brought up.”
Not surprisingly, Pitt and his current girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, have fiercely guarded their relationship from the press; they’ve completely avoided the topic in interviews and have even tried to thwart the paparazzi by showing up at the same premiere in separate Limousines. Today Pitt allows himself a couple of bursts of candor, although he makes an effort to steer the conversation toward the general and the hypothetical.
He says he disagrees with the theory that it gets harder to fall in love as one gets older. “I haven’t found it to be that way,” he says. ‘I’ve found it easier. But then again, your ideas of love change. I mean, you thought you were in love when you had the little girlfriend in sixth grade. You thought that was it. Now you understand what’s important for you, what’s important for the team, what’s important for her as you get to know her.”
Ultimately, Pitt says, he thinks he’ll probably be happiest following his parents’ model for a relationship marriage, children, happy home. Is celebrity making that difficult? “Listen, there are hard periods,” he says quietly. “But, I mean, I’ve certainly found workability. I have it the best now that I’ve ever had it.”
Without uttering Aniston’s name, he confirms that they’re about to take a long vacation together in a place they’d rather keep secret. (A few weeks ago, planeloads of photographers flocked to St. Bart’s, reacting to a false rumor about the couple’s imminent wedding there.) “It’s mind-blowing,” says Pitt. “I don’t know where it starts. Someone make’s some assumption, prints it, and the other magazines pick up on it. And then the ball’s rolling. They keep printing that we’re pregnant and that we’re getting married on this day-and then when it doesn’t happen on the day they said it would, then they get a whole other week’s worth of fodder on why we didn’t get married. And then they make something else up.”
[...]
Pitt has been flirting with several projects this year, including a Miramax road-trip comedy, Waking Up in Reno, in which he might star opposite Aniston [...].
But Pitt, it turns out, still has one more thing to say.A week later, after he and Aniston have safely escaped to Europe ,there’s an unexpected phone message-a low, distant rumble on the answering machine: “Hey, it’s Brad Pitt. I’m calling from the depths of Spain…..We’re in transit, so I’ll try you again later.”
There’s no hint about the purpose of the call. Career news? A wedding announcement? Second thoughts about something he said?
Pitt leaves a second message, then a third, saying he’ll try again soon. But the call never comes.
He doesn’t leave a number.
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Premiere, August 1999 (Brad Pitt article)
He lives in a breathtaking, lovingly restored Craftsman home. He dates breathtaking, lovingly maintained Jennifer Aniston. Brad Pitt has the world on a key chain on his belt loop, and he twirls it as he pleases.
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Rolling Stone, October 1999 (Brad Pitt article)
Brad Pitt swishes down the Lisbon streets, one more American on vacation. In his hand he carries a camera, which he shoots from waist height. “I learned a few tricks from the papara*holes,” he announces. “The paparnazis. They all look alike to me - horns and a pointed tail and a big Cyclops eye. . . .” He snaps a ragged, down-and-out Portuguese man on a bench and pushes through a flock of pigeons, a little disappointed that the birds, with their seen-it-all urban ways, are too underwhelmed to scatter in front of the lens. Instead they nonchalantly hop out of his path, and he swishes onward.
It is the last week of May. “I’m unemployed, and Jen’s on a break,” Pitt says, “so we thought we’d travel.” He describes his state of mind: “I’m on the move. I’m in the ramble-on state of mind. Just, you know . . . on the search. On the . . .” - he pronounces this last word as French - “. . .Exploration.” I ask him what he’s looking for. “Just playing,” he says. “Just seeing how other people live, that’s all. Other people’s cultures.” Pitt has not acted since David Fincher’s Fight Club, a remarkable film - out this month - in which Pitt and Edward Norton play the co-founders of an underground group in which willing men beat one another with bare fists to rediscover feeling in themselves. Having turned down roles in films from Robert Redford and Cameron Crowe, Pitt has no jobs in the pipeline. “I just go with the flow pretty much,” he says. “I’m enjoying floating, too, man.”
Pitt seems relaxed. His girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, is back in the hotel and will not be seen today, but the very fact that he mentions her so readily - and that he is happy to meet up during their European break - marks quite a change from the blinds-down, determined privacy behind which they have previously shuttered their relationship. “We did well for a while there,” he says. “We just didn’t participate. We just wanted to see if something was going to grow on its own without any outside influence. We just wanted to keep it special. Keep it ours.”
Right now, Pitt’s plan is to go to an art-deco cafe he spotted earlier from their car. He heads down the long road toward it, moving swiftly. If anyone half-recognizes him, he is gone before the photo-fit match is completed. If you are famous like Pitt, you adopt smart tactics. You learn that the best way to see a city is on a bicycle - you can out-pedal any pedestrian attention and cut away to places where the paparazzi cars can’t follow. But even on foot, there are useful strategies. “Good hats,” he says. (Today he’s in a floppy-rimmed Puma number.) “You’ve got to switch the hats. You’ve got to have some good glasses and stay on the move.” Mostly, Pitt and Aniston have been doing all right.
Pitt: I’m a little more concerned about it than when I’m on my own. Because I don’t want…[His voice trails off]
Me: It’s called chivalry.
Pitt: No, it’s called…[Pitt gets this far through the sentence and stops, as though he realizes he has a decision to make. And he makes it.]…love I suppose.
Me: Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Pitt: No, there’s not. Absolutely not. [More confident] Absolutely not. [Grins] Greatest thing in the world. On the record, I say that.
[...]
On this road trip, Pitt and Aniston have been listening to Everlast and Lenny Kravitz, and dipping their toes into Cornershop. Sometimes they turn on the TV “The other night” Pitt says “we were flicking channels, and we saw Amigos.” They have to check into hotels under assumed names. In Portugal, they are the Vegases; Pitt is Ross Vegas. “I love when they call up:’Something for the Vegases,’ ” he says.
[...]
Before Pitt and Aniston reached Portugal, they visited the great cities of Andalusia in southern Spain. In Granada, the paparazzi found them at the Alhambra, the grand Moorish palace, and they agreed to pose together for 50 minutes if they were then left alone. “Then they’d fuck off,” Pitt says, “and you’d find them in the bushes half an hour later, because they’ve got to get that pic with us picking our nose or scratching our sweaty crack.” The attention was bearable until they reached Seville, where there was such a scrabble of people around them that they had to give up. To avoid further attention, they headed off in a car at four in the morning (this is what money and fame get you: to do a little sightseeing, you have to wake up in the middle of the night). In Portugal, so far, they remain undetected. Early tomorrow, they will take a private plane to Morocco.
These Spanish photos of Pitt and Aniston will soon appear all over American tabloids, alongside the latest rumors about the couple. They are forever about to be married - never nearly true, Pitt insists. “It’s just a weekly barrage,” he says. “You know they have a perception of Jen from the show and they take her character as being man-needy, and so they present her that way, chasing, and that I don’t want to get…..” - he lets this thought hang - “…….and they create this whole scenario, and then they say we’re getting married, and because I did a movie about Tibet, and because she’s Greek, we’re going to have a Tibetan - slash - Greek wedding, and we’re going to ride yaks into the sunset.”
[...]
Me: [Confused] But your saying that right now your in love or whatever, and it’s a good thing.
Pitt: [Laughs] I guess it could be reduced to that. OK.
[...]
He says that he is now considering doing a comedy with Aniston, Waking Up In Reno.
[...]
For Fight Club, Pitt’s head was shaved. “It felt great,” he says. “Best haircut I’ve ever had.”
I ask where he had it done.
“Awww,” says Pitt. He shakes his head. He’s worried about answering. “Because,” he explains, “it’s going to be a cute little moment.”
You could share one cute little moment, I tease.
“I don’t want cute moments, man! I want to be mean and ugly.” He relents. “No, Jen shaved it. We had a laugh. Please don’t make it a cute moment. Just say she shaved me - that’s it.”
[...]
This reminds me of my favorite recent tabloid story about him and Aniston: that they went to a garage sale where Pitt handed over twenty dollars to buy a video of Cutting Class ( an early Pitt flop ), which he proceeded to smash on the spot while saying, “I wish I could destroy every copy.” “No truth,” says Pitt. “Not even the garage sale. Not even the forum - never been to a garage sale. We have never been anywhere near a video of Cutting Class.”
[...]
Me: Do you believe in happy ever after?
Pitt: No. No. [ Shakes his head ] No, there’s no such thing.
Me: Does your girlfriend mind that?
Pitt: We’re pretty much on the same wavelength.
Me: Some people would find that unromantic.
Pitt: Oh, I find it quite beautiful. I find the others bullshit.
Me: What takes its place?
Pitt: I don’t know. [ His tone changes ] The gauge comes up and I start monitoring when we start talking about the relationship, only because of the ways it’s been perverted in the past, and I’m hypersensitive. But I will say this about Jen: She’s fantastic, she’s complicated, she’s wise, she’s fair, she has great empathy for others… and she’s just so cool.
Me: So you like her then?
Pitt: Very much. But what I ask is that she does not hold anything back - I don’t want to stifle that.
Me: Can you explain what the two of you have in common?
Pitt: No, that’s really all I want to say. We’re pretty much after the same thing - I’ll say that. Just great respect for each other. It’s fantastic. We don’t get hung up on… there’s no offense ever taken.
At my request, Pitt gets two friends to call me. James Gray is a film director ( Little Odessa ) whom Pitt has known for about six years, though they have never worked together. Gray tells me about dinners full of smart conversation. “The last time I went to dinner with Brad and Jennifer, most of the discussion boiled down to Freud and capitalism,” he says. “And whether or not Freud was a misogynist. It’s not like we sit down to dinner and say, ‘Let’s talk about Freud….’”
[...]
Another time, Pitt is at home, getting ready to go to the Emmy Awards with Aniston.
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The Times Leader, November 1999 (Brad Pitt article)
“I’m kinda really happy right now,” he slyly admits. “Sorry, I know the press doesn’t like to hear that. But I’m feeling good. I just want to get that out there because there’s so much made-up stuff going around about me these days.”
It seems as if Pitt’s high spirits can be attributed to his solid relationship with his sweetie of nearly two years, Jennifer Aniston. But Pitt doesn’t want to connect the dots. After giving the media a play-by-play account of his romance with Paltrow, he’s understandably wary of talking too much about his latest lady love.
Pitt does say, contrary to tabloid reports, marriage is not around the corner for Aniston and him. “I believe in marriage of course,” says the 36-year old actor, who’s never been wed.
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Esquire, September 2000 (Brad Pitt article)
We pass a cop car and he cracks a smile.
“Me and Jen get BBC news on satellite. Instead of watching American news we get to see the craziness from afar. Using the BBC as a mirror seems like a fairer vision of what’s going on.”
[...]
He is about to move into a house which, on first appearance, appears to be constructed entirely of chairs and dogs. Four dogs, or is it five? And at least 20 chairs. Big plush chairs. A retro bubble chair lined with fake fur. Tan leather sofas. A metal chair that slides in and out of the wall. A love seat at the foot of the stairs, for when you are so in love, you can’t make it to the next floor without stopping to smooch. There are numerous framed pictures of Jennifer Aniston, who looks, in every one, prettier than you’ve ever seen her before, leading one to believe that Pitt was the photographer, for it’s true that we look most beautiful in the eye of those who loves us most. And, boy, does he love her, with that rare love that is nourishing rather than destructive.
Jason Flemyng, who as well as starring in Snatch with Pitt, has just finished filming a heavy metal movie (Metal Gods) with Aniston, describes her as “a female Brad. Couldn’t be more gorgeous, yet utterly without vanity. They took me out a few times in LA and, this will sound strange, but it was so nice to be around such normal people. We just ate Mexican food and talked nonsense.”
Pitt says that it will not be long before we see Aniston in her own equivalent of Twelve Monkeys or Fight Club.
“We talk about it all the time. I’m on to it, don’t worry. I think Friends is hilarious. I will be sad when that show goes off air. But I cannot wait for everyone else to see the things she can do, because that show is just one facet of her talent.”
He has built a photography studio in the house in which he plans to experiment, and an art studio “because Jen loves messing around with paint”. He tells me about the inspiration behind the development of the 1910 house, which is more of a sprawling compound. “I’m interested in ways to make minimalism seem warm.”
He tries to explain and I try to understand, but it’s like listening to directions in a foreign country. All I can see is it’s a house that is clearly inspired by being in love.
“Yeah, I started working on it when I got together with Jen.”
There is a bathroom with a waterfall and lights and jets, African carvings on cupboards, alongside Japanese screens. We move from room to room, each more impressive than the next. He greets every workman by name, introduces me to all of them. We settle in the living room. On the table is a copy of Ray’s A laugh, a gritty book of photojournalism with which he is greatly taken. There are also three neatly displayed copies of Woman’s Own, whose presence seems to confuse him.
“Hmm. I’ve been living with Jen. This place has become a Mecca for anyone who needs a place to crash. That’s my best explanation.”
[...]
And then he is gushing about “Jen” this and “Jen” that. “That’s a book Jen gave me.” “Here’s a chair Jen picked out.” He’s recently returned from filming The Mexican with Julia Roberts (in a defunct mining town in a Mexican mountain range), so he and Jen are going to spend the next two nights camping on the beach above Malibu. So he suggests politely, he has to get going soon.
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Flaunt, January 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
His personal crowning achievement is the design and renovation of his wife Aniston’s hillside living/studio/getaway.
[...]
Brad Pitt: [...] As I moved in, I’d just finished a movie and decided I’ve got so many ideas, I’d love to play with them. So I started ripping stuff out and trying my first experiments with design, and it was a great experience. So, overall, a year-and-a-half for this house. When I got into it, it was fun, and there was so many problems to be answered with the stone house, and I wanted to do a studio space, and this one was laid out perfectly for all the stuff Jen and I like to play with. [...]
Brad Pitt: [...] And each part of the studio has a function. This area is for computers, that area for my architectural models, Jen paints in one area, and there is an area for creating pottery.
[...]
Do you and Jennifer share this interest in design?
One of the first designing couples I got into was Charles and Ray Eames, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. Macdonald did a lot of the small details for Mackintosh’s projects. Jen and I kind of work that way. We just have fun. We’ve made a point now, where we’re living, that we have an art room. And with our marriage we’re combining our stuff - the amalgamation of stuff - we’re streamlining. In the place we just bought on the westside ( Beverly Hills ), we’re most excited about our art room, and that’s probably where we’ll spend most of our evenings. The art room was our chief demand and actually we took the biggest room in the house. When the day’s work is done, and it’s night, you can sit in front of a movie on television and have dinner. And you can waste a lot of time - and it’s not really wasted time. I’m a big believer in checking out for a bit. But I get so much more out of life if I use my time to just make something. I just want to make things. My credo has been simplified to “just make things.”
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W, October 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
Building the room was a Herculean feat. To bring the tub in, a crew literally followed procedures used to build the pyramids. Since using a crane would have meant removing trees outside, a crew of 10 men brought the item in on a system of rolling pipes. But Pitt says the undertaking was well worth the effort, particularly because of the timing. “The bathroom was the first thing in the house I worked on at the time when Jen and I were really hooking up strong,” he says, referring, of course, to his wife, Jennifer Aniston. “Things are on your mind…and I guess I had a dirty mind at the time.”
“It is a bit hedonistic in there. It is a sexy room.” After a moment’s pause he adds, “it works.”
[...]
Pitt is not designing for one anymore. But his wife “definitely has a love” for design, too, he says. Indeed, Aniston was supportive enough to give him a surprise weekend stay at a private Greene and Greene-designed house for his birthday last year. But it appears their taste diverge somewhat. As has been widely reported, the couple recently purchased a six-bedroom $13 million Beverly Hills house that’s said to resemble a French chateau. When pressed, Pitt admits his wife may have slightly different ideas about decoration. “She has an-uh-more matronly take on it,” he says gingerly.
However the new residence turns out, Pitt says he will “absolutely” keep this property. In addition to serving as a place for his meeting, it will be the couple’s art studio. “We love to work with clay, draw, carve pumpkins here,” he says. It’s also a great party house. “It’s a place made for late nights, fires, drinks, friends.”
Of course, it’s not like this couple has to choose between only two houses. They have lots of real estate between them-and more being added all the time. Pitt reveals he is already “working on a great project up the coast.” The actor has acquired “a bunch of little hippie shacks,” which he says are “kind of like a commune.”
“This one is about keeping it really cheap and using all prefab materials,” he explains. (His main supplier, he jokes, is the store he nicknames “Home Cheapo.”) “We’re seeing what you can come up with under those restraints.” Mind you, according to sources, this project is set on a stunning plot of land-15 of central California’s most glorious coastal acres.
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Skip, October 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
SKIP: How are you doing as a married man?
Brad Pitt: Just great. I’ve never been this happy. Every time I see Jennifer, I am so proud that she has become my wife. And you have just more fun at everything, once you’ve found the right one.
SKIP: You got married relatively late [in life].
Brad Pitt: Yes, I wanted to come clear with myself first. And I wanted to be sure that it was the right one. My parents have been married for 40 years and I never want to go through a divorce.
SKIP: What do you think about Hollywood dream couples like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman breaking up?
Brad Pitt: In my opinion that happens when your expectations and demands are too high. Life is not a Hollywood film. And marriage is simply a thing of everyday and you need to go about it in the right way. But in spite of being very romantic and believing in the great love, I also understand, from my own experience, that relationships can just fail. You have to overcome the I-mania and develop a we-feeling.
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Associated Press, November 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
And there’s his Thanksgiving night guest spot opposite wife Jennifer Aniston on Friends (playing a high school enemy of Aniston’s character).
‘You could call it shameless self-promotion in conjunction with a film release, and that’s part of it,’ Pitt said, referring to the TV episode airing a day after ‘Spy Game’ opened. ‘On the other hand, it’s working with my wife, which I wanted to do, and working on this show that has this incredible ability just to make you happy.
‘The third factor is, I see laughter as very important in this time, considering the terrorist attacks’, Pitt said. ‘If we’re entertainers, and some would argue with that, but if we are, let’s get out and entertain.’
[...]
Which begs a side trip to another false news report last summer, that Pitt and Aniston, who married in July 2000, were expecting a baby. Pitt said they plan to have children, but that’s down the road.
‘I don’t know how near that is and won’t know any time soon,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go there till I’m absolutely ready to put them first. On the other hand, I keep saying anything that will take the focus off myself, I’m all for.’
[...]
‘It’s just become another fixture in the life,’ Pitt said. ‘My day starts out, I have my coffee, kiss my wife goodbye, hop in the car, head down the hill. [...]
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Vanity Fair, November 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
Since his marriage to Aniston – which he refers to as “the merger” – the scrutiny has only gotten worse.
[...]
He has a real talent for architectural design, and talking about the studio in which we are sitting, where he draws, makes models, and dabbles in one of his other interests, photography (and which he shares with Aniston, who paints and sculpts), Pitt comes to life, his weariness vanishing.
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Skip, November 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
SKIP: You appear in December in an episode of Friends. How was it like working with your wife, Jennifer Aniston?
Brad Pitt: We had a couple of outbursts of laughter on the set. This series has the incredible power of making one happy. And right now we need that more than ever.
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Skip, December 2001 (Brad Pitt article)
SKIP: Has your marriage to Jennifer Aniston changed you?
Brad Pitt: Yes, for the first time I have the feeling that I am not an outsider anymore and that I belong with someone. I have found my home. The thing that surprised me the most was how well I feel. It is very reassuring to go together down a path that instead of getting boring gets more interesting every day. Oh God, I can already see the headline: “Brad Pitt: Happier that ever!” … (laughs)
——————-
From an interview with Selena Gomez:
Kidzworld: When you are out of the states, do you get to go out and do things without fans or paparazzi swamping you?
Selena: I can be a tourist. I don’t think it’s changed for me. Yeah, you get recognized occasionally but I’m not scared of that. I want to do things, go out and see the places that I’m [visiting] so, obviously, I do that.
David: It’s different that people think. All they see is what is in magazines and it’s plastered all over but it’s different in real life and not as bad as people think.
Selena: Well, Jennifer Aniston and those people probably get it a lot.
——————-
So just like Ross, you had a friend turn into a girlfriend. Now, in real life, would you go for a girl like Rachel?
David Schwimmer: No, I mean, girls like Rachel are funny and adorable and sexy, but I need someone who has direction - who’s working toward something she’s really passionate about.
So will we ever see you posing butt-naked on Rolling Stone like Jennifer Aniston?
David Schwimmer: No, I don’t think so. My parents definitely wouldn’t approve!
- from an interview from 1996 (David Schwimmer issue)
———————-
The Kiss, Phase One: Stage 24, Warner Bros. Studios, in Burbank. Rachel and Ross have just found out they “have feelings” for each other, and they fight cute about their bad timing as Rachel closes Central Perk for the night. Ross storms off; she flings herself on the couch. He reappears; they meet in the middle of the room; they reach. At last: a kiss. Silence, until guest director Peter Bonerz - you know him as Jerry the Orthodontist from The Bob Newhart Show - calls for a huddle: “We’re changing our LIVES here, people. Let’s WORK it.”
[...]
Schwimmer and Aniston are still blocking out the Kiss. It’s four seconds the network will want to promote the bejesus out of, but no one is worried, least of all the canny architects of the “Ross-Rachel romantic arc.” Rattling the kids’ comfy cocoon with some intra-Friends sex seems natural, even necessary to them.
“Much as I admire some shows,” says Marta Kauffman, “there came a point in Cheers when you said, ‘Oh fuck her already. Please!’ Maddie and David [in Moonlighting]? ‘Kiss the woman!’”
Friends are sexually responsible, but Friends do hit the sack with Others - even the women. Because of that, the pilot show didn’t test too well, according to NBC’s Jamie McDermott, the 31-year-old exec-on-the-move who shepherded the series through development. “Monica, the most grounded character, sleeps with a guy,” McDermott explains. “Those social biases against it came out with test audiences.”
The young production/development team that McDermott heads decided it was a case of research be damned. “You’ve got to go with your gut,” she says. “One of the differences between TV now and Leave It To Beaver days is that adults then were much more infallible. Human beings make mistakes, and it’s OK to put that on the air.”
Hence the birth of Ross’s son - with all the warring factions in the labor room - was last seasons penultimate show, and rather sweet. Part of the show’s appeal is it’s refreshing retreat from all sorts of correctness. Scripts reek of unregenerate guy behavior and plenty of erection jokes. There is the youthful overindulgence. After watching Aniston weave deftly - and hilariously - through a drunk scene with a suffering blind date, Matt Perry wonders in concerned-announcer tones about how a more well, thoughtful show might treat two extra glasses of Chardonnay:
“This week, in a very special episode of Friends…”
[...]
The Kiss, Phase Two: Schwimmer has been pacing. He thinks maybe he should steamroller the scene - grab Aniston, mess her up a little. Seems right after all this time. Bonerz yells for action, and Ross rockets through the door, grabs Rachel, lifts her in the air and starts the Kiss, which ends hard, against the counter. “Hey,” says Bonerz, “It’s a kiss, not tumbling.”
“A lot rides on this,” says Aniston during a break. “It’s huge. HUGE.” For that reason, she’s thinking the Kiss should be slow. She likes the fact that Bonerz and writes have just come up with three locks for her to struggle with before she can let Ross back in. Set carpenters are hammering at them now.
“I think slow is always good,” she reasons. She and Schwimmer, her good friend, movie date and confidant in real life, have huddled and agree to pull the scene like taffy the next time. Outside work, she notes, they’re in very different places. Schwimmer’s longtime girlfriend, a Louisiana attorney, has just moved here to take a job with a Century City law firm. “And I’m single,” sighs Aniston, now officially one of People’s Most Intriguing People. “I actually love it. I was in a relationship for five years. It’s like being let out of prison - oh, not that it was prison.”
On the series premiere, Rachel showed up in a wedding dress, scared and panting, having just left her nice-but-boring orthodontist at the altar. Brave new vistas opened up when the Friends made her cut up Daddy’s charge cards and get a job. Aniston, a former burger joint waitress, had no trouble playing that moment of scary singles lib. Now she gets to live it. “It’s just that feeling of sunlight,” she says. “what do I do? I feel like I’m back where I started when I was 20. Not knowing anything. I don’t want to date. What do people say now? Where do they go?”
[...]
The Kiss run-through, final try: Rachel is flailing at the locks. Basset eyes watch her through the glass. Click, turn, she gets the locks, opens both doors wide. Beat. Ross reaches; his arms travel up from her waist, wrap her, nearly lift her. The kiss is…hot! Long…
Marta Kauffman screams. Above wild cast and crew applause, she is moaning, “This is terrible. I’m so sad. Why am I so emotional?”
Schwimmer and Aniston hug. In a quieter voice, Kauffman is asking, “Who knew David could be so sexy?” When things calm down, David Crane faces his actors. “Serieswise,” he says, “this moment is extraordinarily satisfying.”
Says Jerry the orthodontist, “Amen.”
- from GQ Magazine, March, 1996 (David Schwimmer issue)
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“We were all kind of afraid of each other at first,” says Schwimmer. “We had six days to be best friends. Plus, we didn’t want to bond too much because if the show is picked up, you still don’t know if you’re coming back or if they’re coming back.” Well, we all know what happened after that.
It is also well documented that there’s alot of caring and sharing off the set. Splitting up for the series summer hiatus was painful for the Friends cast, but they’ve kept vigorously in touch. “I just saw Jen [Aniston] last night,” Schwimmer reports, “and Matt Perry gets in town tomorrow.”
[...]
The tabloids are another matter. Don’t get him started. “In one, there was a photo of Jennifer and me, Jennifer and Matt, and Jennifer and Matt LeBlanc, saying that she’s slept with all three of us, and that I’ve dumped my girlfriend. Complete fabrication.”
- US Magazine, September 1995 (David Schwimmer issue)
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From an article about Brad Pitt’s brother, Doug Pitt from 2004:
(Lisa is Doug’s wife, Jane is Pitt’s mother, Julie is Pitt’s younger sister and Rob is her husband.)
They’re a busy, average Ozarks family. Except for one thing: Doug’s brother is Hollywood megastar Brad Pitt.
Doug and his family never guessed years ago what unexpected consequences — and privileges — would come with fame once-removed.
For his kids and their cousins, it means summer vacations at Uncle Brad’s beach house where Aunt Jen (Jennifer Aniston) whips up killer barbecue and homemade salsa.
…
To the family, Brad is simply another Pitt kid. He and his wife are as much a part of the family as anyone. He’ll drop anything, they say, when he’s needed, like last summer when Jane’s mother died. Brad and Jennifer flew in the next morning.
A few years ago, they made a surprise visit for Thanksgiving. Last November, Jane and Bill drove to California for the holiday.
…
The kids know their aunt and uncle are “famous,” says Lisa, but they don’t comprehend what famous is.
Julie sheltered her kids from Brad’s fame as long as she could. She wanted them to know her brother as uncle first, actor second. Aunt Jen, too. One time the twins were confused to see her on a “Friends” promotional.
“Is that Aunt Jen the same as OUR Aunt Jen?” one asked her mother.
…
Only the closest friends hear about the glamourous side of being a Pitt. Yes, Doug acknowledges, there are privileges.
A couple months ago, Julie and Rob got to be extras on “Friends.”
…
Doug and his family rarely comment on Brad’s life.
“What is Brad’s success is his success and we don’t try to step in his limelight. We stay out of it and let him do his thing,” says Bill.
“If Brad and Jen haven’t said it,” explains Doug, “it doesn’t need to be said.”
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Katie Couric Interviews Chelsea Handler
KATIE COURIC: Di from Phoenix wants to know—what women do you admire, funny or not?
CHELSEA HANDLER: I admire a lot of my friends, the people I’ve gotten to work with. There are women like Gloria Steinem, who have done amazing things for us. But I admire more the people in my personal life whom I get to meet and spend time with than I do the people whom I don’t know.
KATIE COURIC: Is there anybody who really makes you laugh? A woman who really makes you laugh, other than me?
CHELSEA HANDLER: Jennifer Aniston makes me laugh. She’s irreverent and hilarious, and she sends me really, really funny e-mails.
KATIE COURIC: She’s funny?
CHELSEA HANDLER: Very.
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